walk the line
by BeyondMyReach
Summary: "What are you thinking so loudly about?" Doffy asked, dropping a kiss onto Rosinante's neck. Rosinante imagined a hound with its parted jaws hovering above his neck, likely to rip out his throat as it was to nuzzle and whine against it, and let out a soft sigh as he tilted his head back. Role Reversal: Older Brother!Rosinante, Younger Brother!Doflamingo, Doflamingo/Rosinante [1/3]


_He never found out how they got to the point, only that he had gone into the city to procure some food for them three days after their mother's death and when he returned to their shelter, he found Doffy pointing a gun at their father's head and their father sobbing out apologizes as he knelt there in front of the gun like a martyr._

 _Rosinante remembered being frightened, remembered cursing the distance between him and them and willing his legs to run faster and to not trip, remembered the baseless certainty that everything would be fine as long as he got to them in time._

 _Somehow in the midst of the screaming and shouting, Rosinante managed to make it in time to stand between them. "Doffy," Rosinante started to say, not wanting to waste any time because he knew his little brother, knew him to be opportunistic and resolute and if he wanted to convince him, he need to do it_ now _._

 _"Doffy," Rosinante wanted to say, except for some reason, his ears were ringing and he felt disembodied and numb. What caught his attention, however, was the look on his little brother, wide-eyed, expression full of fear, body trembling so violently that the smoking gun slipped out of his hand._

 _The gun's clatter against the ground was masked by the louder thud that sounded behind him. Rosinante turned around, body oddly heavy and head spinning, to the sight of their father's body lying on the ground face down._

 _His head was a splattered mess of brain, blood and shattered bones._

 _Rosinante's mind felt slow. He couldn't comprehend what was going on._

 _His legs gave out beneath him and Rosinante went crashing to the ground, suddenly up and personal with the bloody pattern on the ground. His body exploded in pain and when Rosinante coughed, liquid gurgled up and splashed against the ground._

Oh, _he thought as he glanced down to see the liquid he threw up matching the mess on the ground._ Oh, _he thought as he looked down to his stomach to see a bloody mess there._ Doffy shot through me.

 _Doffy._

 _Heart in his throat, Rosinante struggled to spot his little brother, except before he could even begin, Doffy suddenly fell to his knees. For a heart-stopping moment, Rosinante ridiculously thought that_ _Doffy_ _had also been shot, that it wasn't_ _Doffy_ _who actually shot them after all but actually snipers hidden somewhere in the shadows, hired to take them down one by one._

 _But then Doffy began pulling Rosinante's head onto his lap, rough enough that it knocked Rosinante out of his fantasy and back to reality, and then Rosinante was breathing more easily with the knowledge that his little brother was fine. His vision was also getting burry though and Rosinante must been mistaken about being back to reality and instead was still delusional, because there was no way those were Doffy's tears that were dripping onto his face._

 _"Roci, Roci!" Doffy sobbed, cradling Rosinante's head with one hand as he roughly pressured Rosinante's wound with the other. Rosinante blacked out for a moment at the wave of pain that followed. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to shoot you. Don't die, Roci!"_

 _"Don't cry, little brother," Rosinante wanted to say, but a magnetizing force was pulling him under. Despite all his efforts, Rosinante's eyes were slowly closing._

 _"Roci, no! Don't go, I beg you!_ Don't leave me alone! _"_

Rosinante's eyes fluttered opened, and for a moment, the area near his right hip ached. Rosinante brought a hand to it and viciously pressed against it, reminding himself that the pain he felt there was not real. A wound that scarred over fourteen years ago cannot ache.

Rosinante forced himself to take a steady breath and then let go. Slipping off the bed to a stand, he said, "You've gotten better at masking your presence again, Doffy," as he began to fix his rumpled suit.

Rosinante could sense Doffy approaching and then a few seconds later, could hear his steps. Rosinante continued the pretense of fixing his suit even though he was no doubt making it worse and was concentrating more on Doffy behind him than at the task at hand. Arms wrapped around his waist, one hand curling around the edge of his left hip and the other splaying with unerring accuracy on top of the scar.

"Brother," Doffy breathed against Rosinante's ear, the word a soft cry in itself as the hand on top of the scar moved against it like a tender caress, and Rosinante closed his eyes briefly.

"Shh." Rosinante turned around in the cage of Doffy's embrace, dislodging his hand on the entrance scar only for the other to land on the exit one like it was inevitable fate, and kissed the corner of Doffy's lips. As though he was following a trail of sweets, Doffy gave it a chase until he received a proper kiss. "Did the Rammsteiner Family agree to the meeting, Doffy?"

At those words, the odd vulnerability around his little brother shed away, replaced by a playful, viciousness that he embodied most of the time. "Fufufufu, nope," Doffy replied, popping the last syllable. "They sent our men back in body bags, so I went ahead and ordered the top executives to invite a few of Rammsteiner's men over to have a little talk."

"Doffy," Rosinante stressed, feeling a headache coming. He whirled away from Doffy towards the door, prepared to do damage control. "I wish you would talk to me before making a decision like that."

"Don't worry," Doffy said, following behind him, his tone blasé but confident, a note of promise, a vow, behind those words. "I'll do the dirty work silently in the background, so just stay safely in the shadows and manipulate at the top with your strings, alright, Brother?" Halfway through his words, his arm had caught him around his waist and his hand had crept onto the scar again, covering it as though to shield it from the world.

Rosinante stopped with his hand hovering above the doorknob and sighed. He dropped his hand. "You left them alive?" he asked over his shoulder, knowing the answer was 'yes' because that was his stipulation when he agreed to start the Donquixote Family with Rosinante at the head and Doffy as his second-in-command, his right-hand man, his wildcard, his Joker.

"Of course," Doffy said, his eyes undoubtedly lit with amusement behind his shades. "Can't say the same about their mind or their functionality though."

Don't kill unless it is necessary, he had said, and no matter which way Doffy spun it, interrogation was definitely one of those fields that not only didn't necessitate killing but actively required their subject to stay alive. Regardless, Rosinante had no doubt that Doffy would one day somehow manage to find a loophole in that. It was only a matter of when.

Some days Rosinante wondered if it wasn't kinder on Doffy's victims to just let him kill them, but Rosinante was selfish. He didn't want any more blood on Doffy's hand than necessary, didn't want the burden of the knowledge that Doffy split those blood for him at his behest to be any heavier than it had to be, even if Doffy didn't seem to mind. Some days, Rosinante felt that maybe Doffy wanted the burden to drag him down with an unrelenting grip, in the same way that the sea would always drag them down as Devil Fruit users.

Rosinante brushed a hand against Doffy's face, and his little brother let him. Every time he touched him, he didn't know what he expected. Warmth, he logically knew, because when it came down to it, Doffy was a human just like Rosinante himself with blood running beneath his skin. Yet if one day coldness met his hand, he wouldn't be surprised.

Brilliant, dangerous, innovative, who would have thought that the Calm Calm Fruit, a fruit with such a innocuous name, could break men and drive them mad under Doffy's command? Rosinante thought back to the day Doffy ate the fruit, found out its ability and his subsequent response, and couldn't truly say he was surprised by the outcome.

"It's perfect," he had said as a wide grin spread across his face. However harmless the name Calm Calm Fruit was, Rosinante guessed it was still a Devil Fruit after all. In the right hands, a harmless trinket can even turn into a dangerous weapon.

The reverse was also true, Rosinante knew. Rosinante thought of Doffy and wondered how long can their precarious balance hold. How long can Rosinante silently hold his gun wound over Doffy? That day that Doffy first shot his gun, he had left their father dead, a physical and mental scar on Rosinante, and a leash looped around Doffy's throat with the end in Rosinante's hand.

The leash was a flimsy one, more corporal than it was physical, yet when Rosinante pulled, Doffy always eventually heeded, even as he pulled the leash taunt. A hound that would keep hunting, keep racing ahead doing whatever it wanted, until there was a pull to stop it. A hound that made no promise about not turning onto its owner, had bared its teeth once, in fact, and then dedicated the rest of its life to licking the wound.

"What are you thinking so loudly about?" Doffy asked, dropping a kiss onto Rosinante's neck. Rosinante imagined a hound with its parted jaws hovering above his neck, likely to rip out his throat as it was to nuzzle and whine against it, and let out a soft sigh as he tilted his head back.

"You," Rosinante replied honestly and then there was a huff of laughter at his throat.

"Even though I'm here with you, Brother?" Doffy asked, unbuttoning his suit and untucking his white button down. Like a ritual, he went down on his knee – the only time he would ever willingly go down – and Rosinante interrupted by tugging off Doffy's sunglasses and tipping his head up to meet his eyes.

You infiltrated every part of me, Rosinanate didn't say, but Doffy smiled like he did anyway. Without breaking their eye contact, Doffy leaned up and completed his ritual by pressing his lips reverently against the entrance scar. The exit scar, he would take care of later, Rosinante knew. It wasn't the first time they did this dance and nor would it be the last.

In their line of work, it was inconceivable, but that was the only wound Rosinante had ever received that was deep enough to scar.

The puckered scar tingled against his skin as Doffy pulled away and Rosinante wondered behind the gesture. He could never figure out if Doffy did it as an apology to lick the wound clean, or as a mean to keep the wound fresh by relentlessly digging into it day after day.

Rosinante could never forget that day and it seemed like Doffy couldn't either.

As Doffy took him apart that day, eyes piercing and dancing in the light, ruthlessly exploiting all his sweet spots until he was shuddering softly in his arms, Rosinante wondered if it was really him who was holding all the strings.

"Shh," Doffy said, pulling him to his chest. "Sleep. It's going to be fine. I'll take care of everything and I'll be here when you wake up tomorrow."

There was no sunglasses to hide the vicious gleam in Doffy's eyes this time, no barrier to pretend Rosinante was ignorant of what Doflamingo got up to behind his back.

Rosinante thought of the circumstance of his scar, thought of the boy-turned-man that he had watched over all his life, and gently closed his eyes.

* * *

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine  
I keep my eyes wide open all the time  
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds  
Because you're mine, I walk the line

I find it very, very easy to be true  
I find myself alone when each day is through  
Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you

Because you're mine, I walk the line [x2]

You've got a way to keep me on your side  
You give me cause for love that I can't hide  
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide

Because you're mine, I walk the line [x5]

\- "I walk the Line" by Halsey


End file.
